Postelsia 5 
ing a round or irregularly flattened top, or often 
dwarf and shrubby; foliage leaves in clusters of 
two, dark green, semi-cylindrical with concave 
nner faces, 3-6 centimeters long, about 1 milli- 
meter wide, acute, and very minutely serrulate; 
cones often clustered, oval or subcylindrical, 
not deciduous; cone-scales hard, woody, thin, 
the exposed end slightly thickened and armed 
with a long slender somewhat recurved, finally 
deciduous spine; seeds about 2 millimeters long, 
with thin wings about 1 centimeter in length. 
Along the coast from Alaska to northern Cali- 
fornia and eastward to the Cascade range. 
Farther east it yields gradually to the variety 
Murrayana, which is one of the most abundant 
trees in the more arid forest regions of the in- 
terior from northern British Columbia to Colo- 
rado and the mountains of southern California. 
In western Vancouver Island, this species is 
found as a low contorted shrub along the edge 
of the forest next to the ocean, and as a small 
irregular, flat-topped, slow-growing tree in the 
sphagnum bogs of the forest region. It seldom 
reaches a height of ten meters and it is often 
